How to Navigate Post-Graduation Life
A lifestyle blog post about graduating college.
I graduated college about three months ago, and I constantly have this feeling that I have a 3,000-word paper I forgot to write and that it needed to be turned in yesterday.
Transitions are weird; there’s no better way to say it. I feel like I'm in the biggest transition period of my life, but I'll probably feel like this again in ten years.
I’m back at home living with my parents like I’m 17, but I’m also supposed to know a lot more than I did 6 years ago. Sometimes, I feel like I didn’t just do 4 years of college – I didn’t live on my own for four years, didn’t get a double degree, worked multiple jobs, or traveled around Europe for five months. Instead, it feels like I’ve been living at home this whole time and everything was just a fever dream.
There isn’t really a ‘how-to guide’ on how to transition from college to post-grad, which leaves me wondering if I'm doing any of it right. Before graduating, I tried to plan out what the next couple of months would look like. I remember going to the gym after finding out I didn’t get the job for the summer that I thought I would and walking on the treadmill for two miles calling as many places as I could think about in Lavallette. I was about to graduate college, and I couldn’t even find a summer job.
Finally, I stumbled upon a marine science camp only five minutes from my house at the beach. When I had the best interview of my life with the owner of the camps and found out I got a job, my summer fell into place. I had a job, a place to live, and a completely romanticized version of what my life was about to become. Once my job was secured, my plan looked something like this:
get a summer job
finish summer job
maybe go abroad(?)
maybe get another job
try and write a best-selling book and not need a job.
Now that I can cross off finish summer job, it's time to move on to the next thing. But life is comfortable living at home, and if I stay like this for too much longer, I’ll be too comfortable. I fear this too comfortableness because if I let myself settle in it for too long, I'll get stuck. I can't get stuck. I won't become a best-selling author and found my own magazine if I let myself get stuck.
I've been applying for jobs all summer, sending my resume out to anyone I can find, and hoping that maybe someone will want to hire me. For some reason though, no one wants to hire me. I'm applying to any job that has the word editor, writer, or magazine in it, but it doesn't seem like it's working. But as I'm applying for jobs and trying to plan out my life, I panic a little because do I really want to settle into a job right now?
I’ve had this far-fetched idea to go abroad and work on a farm for October and November. I've been telling people that’s my plan for the fall, at least. “I’m going abroad! I want to learn about regenerative agriculture blah blah blah.” Which like, yeah I do. But I also have this soul-wrenching fear that I will live a boring life if I don’t go abroad, and my life will be over. I don't even have to go abroad, but if I don’t leave home and embark on an outrageous experience, I will get too comfortable, like I am right now, and do nothing with my life and eventually die of failure.
I put on this front that I’m this person who loves adventure and being around people and experiencing life. And I am. But deep somewhere inside, like deep deep inside, there’s an introvert that wants to stay at home and live with their parents because it’s safe. It’s comforting. It’s the easy option.
But that’s not what I want. What I crave is a life that is fit for a movie character. I want to travel and write and make money in cool and exciting ways. I want to be able to hop on a call with a friend and tell them “hey! I’m working on a farm in Italy for a month before I head somewhere else! Who knows?”
I have these three thoughts swimming around in my head that all contradict each other. The first one is telling me to get a job and start my career now so I can have money and be a famous writer. The second thought is begging me not to start an office job and to gain some cool experiences to write about. The third one is that I'm going to fail and nothing will ever happen for me.
But recently, I had a friend who told me my life isn’t over at 22. We talked about this feeling of restlessness and how we’re worried that if we don’t take advantage of our time now, we never will. But she said to me, this shouldn’t be the only time you do amazing things. Our whole lives should be filled with adventurous and fun things, not just now. So I feel a little better about staying home, making some money, and living a quiet life, (for now).
I’m terrified that if I don’t start my career now, I won’t ever do it. But I’m also scared that if I don’t experience life now as a 22-year-old, I’ll never get to. So, here I am, attempting to figure things out without fighting with my parents and learning to enjoy living at home. I don't really know what's going to happen in the next few months, but if all things go well, this blog will explode and I'll be famous by 2024. Fingers crossed! So read my blogs about my life and my book reviews and anything else I write. I hope you all enjoyed my first blog post!
Some pictures from my summer!
